Equipment for producing a board on which a large number of electronic components are mounted includes a solder printing machine, an electronic component mounter, a reflow machine, aboard inspection machine, and the like. It is common to configure a board production line by connecting the equipment described above. In the equipment described above, the electronic component mounter includes a board conveyance device, an electronic component supply device, a component transfer device, and a control device. In many cases, the electronic component supply device employs a configuration in which multiple feeders are provided in an exchangeable manner. The feeder has a tape feeding mechanism configured to feed out a carrier tape holding multiple electronic components and an individual control section configured to be activated to operate by operation software to control the tape feeding mechanism.
The operation software is installed in the individual control section when the feeder is produced, and there are multiple types of operation software that differ according to specifications and production periods of feeder models. In addition, such operation software can be updated totally or partially even after the feeder has been used so as to adapt a technical improvement or the like. Update software to replace at least part of the operation software is transmitted through communication from, for example, a host control section. Patent Document 1 discloses an electronic component supply device of this type and a technical example relating to updating of operation software of feeders of the electronic component supply device.
An electronic component mounter of Patent Document 1 includes a head unit configured to collect electronic components from multiple feeders, operating based on a control program, so as to mount the collected electronic components on a board, and individual update programs for updating the control program include common program portions that can be interchangeably used with one another, the individual update programs being configured to be transmitted to the corresponding feeders in parallel. According to this, when compared with a case where all of the update programs are transmitted to the feeders individually and sequentially, it is understood that the communication time can be shortened to such an extent that the common programs are transmitted to the corresponding feeders in parallel.